Staying informed of current developments in a particular area of expertise is important for many disciplines. The manual process of having to search for and read recent publications, however, is very cumbersome and time consuming. Often, people are unable to dedicate time to perform this process and may not be able to stay abreast of changes in a particular area.
Systems have been developed which attempt to automate the process of delivering updated information related to a particular field to one or more system users. Such systems may be used in a client/server architecture having one or more users connected over a network to one or more databases, such as server databases. Present systems generally perform a search of these databases to determine objects containing desired information.
Some systems, however, are dedicated to on-line information providers that publish information relating to various fields of endeavor. A user of a network system may access an information provider and request that information related to, for example, a particular topic, be forwarded to the user (e.g., via electronic mail) upon publication. This type of delivery may be included in systems utilizing “push” technology. In this manner, the user is notified of reports related to that topic upon its publication by the provider.
Such systems are limited to on-line information providers and are not capable of providing a user with updates from other sources of information. Present systems are also unable to determine whether information sources or computer applications (e.g., an electronic mail application) contain new information related to a particular topic and notify a user that such information exists.
These and other drawbacks exist.